


Fervent as a Flame

by lunylovegoodlover



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, First War with Voldemort, Friendship, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Marauders Friendship, Marauders' Era, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-30
Updated: 2016-03-30
Packaged: 2018-05-30 01:25:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6402943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunylovegoodlover/pseuds/lunylovegoodlover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was probably inevitable, what with Peter thinking she was a genius and Remus thinking she was fantastic and James thinking she hung the moon. You were the last hold-out, an increasingly uncomfortable position. By the end of your sixth year, you could admit, under duress, that she probably wasn’t devil spawn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fervent as a Flame

**Author's Note:**

> Title from _Loathing_ from the musical Wicked

You hated her for years, you really did. And it was so easy. 

What was there to like? She was a know-it-all, a brat, best friends with a Slytherin and incapable of keeping her mouth shut. She thought she was better than you, and maybe you did have a bit of the family snobbery in you because there was no way in hell that this upstart girl was anywhere near your level. But Merlin's pants she was fun to rile up, and you and James had the time of your lives pushing all her buttons. 

When you're twelve and think you're god's gift to mankind, you loathe what you can't understand. 

Third year, Peter needed tutoring in Potions and before any of you could volunteer to help, Slughorn had him working with Lily (teacher's pet, you thought snidely). When she marched over to your corner of the Common Room to steal Peter, you acted as though you were sending him off to the guillotine, but when he returned, all he had to say was that she explained things better than Slughorn. It wasn't a very high bar, so you didn't think much of it, but later you looked back and realized that Peter was the first to succumb to her charms. 

James fell next, and he fell hard. She came back for fourth year looking fit, you could admit that, but she was still just Evans. Still friends with Snape, still bloody annoying. It was James who was different. He stared at her, though he denied it every time they pointed it out. Remus started calling his pranks "pigtail pulling" and told James that hexing her best friend probably wasn't the smartest way to her heart. When James, blushing furiously, denied he wanted anything to do with her heart, even you could see he was lying. 

You watched, after that. You saw how he changed when she entered a room, instantly trying to get her attention. You saw how she ignored him and how that crushed him. (You wondered if you would ever feel that way about anyone.) His antics got louder and bigger until she couldn't ignore them anymore, and then their arguments became a thing of Hogwarts legend. You took his side, of course, and waxed nostalgic about the bright red she turned when she was angry. 

It's easy to hate someone when they're breaking your best friend's heart. 

She and Remus made prefect 5th year, to absolutely no one's surprise except Moony's. Even you could admit she's smart, so all four of you were extra careful to be discreet about his furry little problem around her. By the end of the year, nothing changed, really, except that Remus had drunk the Kool-Aid. "James could do a lot worse," he said thoughtfully. You tried not to gag. 

5th year also brought about the end of her closest friendship (and nearly brought about the end of yours). She was quieter in the days after the Defense Against the Dark Arts OWL, more drawn into herself. 

James was all torn up about it, of course. He worried about her, peering anxiously after her every time she left a room as though afraid she was going back to Snape. He blamed himself, too, you discovered when a careful question from Remus broke the dam and he ranted about her for hours. 

He was acting strange, strange enough that when he slipped out a few days later you followed him. He had the map in hand and a clear goal, though you couldn't for the life of you figure out where he was headed.

You groaned when you saw her sitting by the water, his obvious target. How long was he going to torture himself over her? But when he sat down beside her, you took a seat in the bushes beside them. If he was going to be stupid over her, you’d be there to pick up the pieces.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, for once mirroring your thoughts.

He shrugged. “Just wanted to see how you were doing, I guess.”

“I’m fine,” she said shortly.

“You’re not,” he said, and you cursed the day that he learned to speak.

“No,” she said. “I’m not, because you’re here bugging me. Go away and I’ll be brilliant.”

“I’m not the problem.”

“Not the-“ she spluttered. “You are the problem, you’ve always been the problem! Why don’t you just leave me alone?”

“I wanted to say I’m sorry,” he said. She raised an eyebrow, clearly disbelieving.

“Sorry? For what?”

“Everything with Snape,” he said, and she laughed.

“You’re not sorry about what happened, you’re glad.”

“Of course I’m glad!” he said, and you could have smacked him. “He wasn’t good for you.”

“And you are?” If looks could kill – well, he would have been dead years earlier, but this glare was particularly fearsome.

“Anyone’s better than him,” he said, leaning forward. On anyone else, the move would have looked calculated, but he couldn’t have been more sincere. It would have made a nice statue. _Boy, Imploring._ “He was bad news, Evans, you have to know that.”

“Of course I know that,” she snapped. “Merlin’s beard, you all think I’m so stupid. Poor little Evans, with her Death Eater best friend. She can’t see that he’s evil, can’t see that he’s lying to her. I knew exactly what was happening. But like hell was I going to just let him go. He was my friend, my best friend, and I was going to do everything in my power to keep it that way.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” he said, suddenly looking concerned.

“Of course it wasn’t,” she said. “But tell me, when was the last time you thought of him as a person, huh? As someone with hopes and dreams and problems, someone real? I wasn’t just friends with him because I pitied him, or whatever bullshit excuse you thought of. He’s brilliant and funny and was kind to me when no one else was; he opened up this whole new world to me and explored it with me and he was my best friend. I wasn’t just trying to save him or be noble, I was trying to hold together the best friendship I’ve ever had!”

“It couldn’t have been that great of a friendship,” he couldn’t resist saying. “You ended it.”

“What if it was Sirius?” she asked, her tone biting. What about what if it was you?

“What does he have to do with anything?” James asked, and you punched the air. It was always nice when your mind-meld worked.

“You heard what people said first year, what some of them are still saying,” she said. “About his family and how he must be just like them. Do you honestly think anyone in this place would have looked twice at him if it hadn’t been for you?”

“Sirius is a thousand times the man Snape ever could be,” James said, his tone turning harsh for the first time.

“Of course he is,” she said and you blinked, surprised. “But imagine for a moment that you were wrong. Imagine that he was like all the rest, that he was everything they assumed he would be.”

“He would never.” 

“Pretend for a moment that he was,” she said, pushing her advantage. “Just for a moment. Pretend that you woke up one day and lost your best friend, that he had turned into something horrible, something that had really been him all along. Pretend he had done something so terrible that you couldn’t ever forgive him. You’d have to walk away, wouldn’t you? But it would destroy you.”

And you felt sick to your stomach, because all you could think about was that night, not too many months ago. The horror you had felt, not for what you had done but for the expression on James’ face. The way you had raged at him, screamed that there were things he could never understand. You believed that – there was a darkness in you that he had never felt. It was easy, most days, to keep it in check, to be the good man that he pushed you (inspired you) to be, but it was always there. It terrified you, because you thought that maybe you would be okay with murdering someone in cold blood. You thought that you were insane, or maybe just broken beyond repair. But James had been there, every time you thought you were about to do something truly horrible, pulling you back from the precipice. And even when he was too late, on that terrible, terrible night, he still managed to fix it.

James Potter was sixteen and a bully, but he had the heart of a good man inside him. You weren’t so lucky, and in that moment you felt a horrible kinship with Snape.

And as for her – 

You remembered those weeks, those hellish weeks when the others wouldn’t talk to you. Peter stared stonily ahead every time you approached him and Remus left any room you entered. James was the worst, of course, because he never did anything half-heartedly. Every pointed comment he made, every ill-disguised glare he sent your way – it burrowed into your skin. You could feel it, even after you made up. And so you remembered those weeks, and for a moment you thought, _Is that what she’s going through?_ And for just a moment, you didn’t hate her, not at all.

But it wasn’t like that for her, of course. She had other friends, better friends, friends who wouldn’t try to kill her. For Merlin’s sake, she had James hanging onto her every word. She would be fine.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. This time, he sounded more sincere. She seemed to hear that and simply sighed.

“You just sped things up. It’s probably healthier this way,” she said, sounding as though she was repeating something she’d been told many times.

“But it hurt you,” he said, and both you and she were surprised by the raw honesty in his voice. “I never wanted that.”

“That’s ironic,” she said after a moment, “seeing as most of my pain comes from you.” But it was half-hearted, almost routine.

“What can I do to help?” he asked. 

“You’ve done enough,” she said, and when he opened his mouth to protest, she cut him off. “I mean it. You listened to me rant, which is more than anyone else has. You didn’t make any particularly offensive comments and you didn’t ask me out. I only wanted to murder you about half a dozen times, which is a solid improvement over our standard.”

He laughed, then stifled the sound as though unsure of its welcome. She didn’t seem to mind though; to your surprise, she smiled a little. And it was a real smile, too, even you could tell that. You hadn’t seen one of those since she ended things with Snape. For someone who claimed she loathed his entire existence, she was being almost friendly with James.

“This is weird,” he said after a moment of silence. “We’re in the same house and year and I know next to nothing about you. I don’t think we’ve ever had a real conversation before.”

“I dunno,” she said. “That debate we had in Potions last year was pretty intense.”

“That wasn’t a debate, that was a fight,” he said. “And I still say you’re wrong.”

“I still say I’m right,” she shot back. “Give me a cauldron and a few hours and I’ll prove it.”

“Don’t make bets you can’t keep,” he warned. You knew that tone; it spelt trouble.

“Try me,” she said, and you knew that tone as well. Its cockiness was uniquely Gryffindor, a sound that you heard from James and yourself all the time.

“Saturday?” he suggested and she grinned.

“Deal.”

The bet ended in a screaming match, of course. She took a moment to look away from James and deliver a particularly stinging insult at you. You just smirked; it was easier to hate her than to touch the complicated tangle of pity and jealousy her presence evoked.

You found yourself looking back to that night on the lake from time to time as the months passed and sixteen bled into seventeen. For a moment there – just a moment – she and James had worked. Had clicked, the way you had clicked with him on the Hogwarts Express way back when. If you thought about it enough, you could almost understand where Remus was coming from when he said that they could be good for each other.

She was still a bitch, of course, and you were sure you would hate her until your dying day, but something – something so small, so subtle, that you almost didn’t notice – had shifted. Without Snape around, she was less caustic, less quick to judge. She deigned to laugh at a few of your jokes and smiled more openly at Peter and Remus. When McGonagall partnered you with her in a fit of pique, you saw the surprise in her eyes when you had something useful to say about _Incarcerous_ and grinned.

Pushing her buttons had been fun while it lasted, but she was used to that now. Exceeding her expectations would be far more amusing.

It was probably inevitable, what with Peter thinking she was a genius and Remus thinking she was fantastic and James thinking she hung the moon. You were the last hold-out, an increasingly uncomfortable position. By the end of your sixth year, you could admit, under duress, that she probably wasn’t devil spawn. Remus’ knowing grin and James’ hopeful joy (not to mention Peter’s not-so-subtle fist pump, which made her look over at your corner of the Common Room with suspicion) make you think that perhaps your tone wasn’t quite grudging enough. 

In the end, it wasn’t the peer pressure that did you in. She didn’t perform any heroic feat to win your heart or change at all, really, except in the way that everyone changes as they grow up. She settled into herself, and you settled into yourself, and you thought, for a brief time, that you could be content with this détente. 

But 7th year was a strange time. There was the usual panic over homework and Quidditch, but it was overshadowed by a deeper panic about the future. You were almost done, almost free – and had no idea what to do with that freedom. There was a war on and while that was hardly new, it felt closer. Next year, you wouldn’t be living under Dumbledore’s protective eye. You’d be out there, in the middle of things. It felt wrong to think about university or mundane office jobs when there were people dying.

There was a solution to that concern, but it would come later. 

For now, you were more concerned with the Death Eaters stalking the halls of Hogwarts. Your pranks escalated and you gave up on going after anyone but Slytherins. Lines were drawn and skirmishes fought. You were adults, now, and the war was just one more responsibility for you to shoulder.

Despite the escalating tensions, you still managed to enjoy your last year at Hogwarts. Nothing bad could really ever happen there, after all. You and Remus and Peter took great delight in teasing James about his Head Boy badge, but also never failed to bring him dinner when he missed it. He was busy, trying to juggle his new duties with his older Quidditch captain ones.

“You need to take a break,” you heard her saying to him once, just as you were about to break into the Head’s office to tell him the same thing. “You’re going to go mad.”

“I’m fine,” he said shortly. “I just need to finish making up this schedule.”

“I can do that,” she pointed out. “Go get dinner.”

“You did the last three,” he said, ignoring her attempts to grab the parchment.

“I know,” she said patiently. “Don’t you have a quidditch game to be preparing for?”

He groaned and finally leaned back. “Don’t remind me.”

“You’re no good to the team half dead,” she said, laying her hand on his, ostensibly to grab the quill. “Go get dinner. I’ll finish here.”

“Fine,” he sighed, pushing out of the chair. You noticed that his hand didn’t move from under hers. “But I’ll get next month’s.”

“All right,” she said, smiling. They looked at each other for a capital-M Moment and you gagged. You could practically hear the romantic music swelling. She broke the Moment pretty quickly, though, turning away to say, “Go. Sirius is waiting for you.”

You didn’t hate her at all, then. 

You never hated her as much as you hated her on the morning of November 1, 1981. Oh, you hated yourself more and still had plenty of loathing left over for James and Remus and Peter and Voldemort and the whole fucking world, but you kept getting stuck on your hatred for her. 

Because she never made it easy, did she? If she had just figured out how great James was earlier, they would have had that much more time together. If she hadn't trusted you so implicitly (stupidly) Peter never would have been their Secret Keeper. If she had never been born, you wouldn't feel as though your heart was being ripped out every time you met your godson's eyes. 

When they threw you in a cell, you curled up into a ball and loathed Lily Evans Potter with everything you had in you, because maybe, just maybe, if you hated her hard enough she would come back to knock some sense into you.


End file.
